Word Play

I
am
now
post
haste
(sort of)
posting
new topic
to discuss.

do you enjoy
constraints?
does word play
give headaches?
Are you confused?

This is a snowball.
A poetic form which
was created by those
who group themselves
with the name of Oulipo.
Every line contains one
additional letter. U like?


More forms for you to enjoy.

Haha, neat. :)

REALLY cool! :-))

Before someone else calls me on it, I better clarify that I misremembered the constraint, and unknowingly created my own form. In the traditional snowball poem, each word has an additional letter. This would tend to limit the length of the poem. My variation could go on forever.

Three books have shipped to me from Amazon in the past two days written by members of Oulipo, and the related Oubapo. They're going to be the next books I read. Once they arrive.

I see that someone has tagged Alphabetical Africa with oulipo, which probably isn't historically correct but shows why tags are sometimes better. (And of course the internet has an errata list.)

While Abish may or may not have been inspired by Oulipo, or any of its members, it is unquestionable that someone interested in Oulipo would also be interested in his work, Alphabetical Africa. So yes, I agree the tag is appropriate.

This snowball reminds me of my first run-in with a sestina--great!

Why, I'm pretty sure it's my tag you're talking about. Yes, Abish was not a member of Oulipo. He was -- I suppose not an "anticipatory plagiarist" of their forms, but maybe a "contemporaneous plagiraist"? I'm pretty sure I've also tagged Eunoia with "oulipo" (hm, it looks like others have as well), even though he's not a member either.

Technically, or pedantically, the Oulipo wasn't a collection of writers, it was a collection of form-inventors. Those books that they wrote weren't somehow "official" Oulipo books. So yes, I'm using the tag more to point to books in Oulipian forms.

Anone familiar with Billy Collins' invented form, the paradelle? It is hysterical. You can check out Theresa Welford's edited compilation of solicited paradelles from her poet friends, read Collins' and Welford's explanations of the form, and view a few samples, at
http://www.redhen.org/bookDetail.asp?bookid=199.

Just goes to show that a wordsmith can work his/her magic in any environment, no matter what the strictures!

No I don't work for Red Hen; I happened onto this book in an LIS class on collection development.

i / do dig / your funky /slowly growing / snowball and may /check out the oulipo, paradelle, etc.

meanwhile, please check out the samples of my composite translations of haiku in multi-reading clusters for an example of visual effects that are more than play . . . any of the haiku translations by at amazon or google or paraverse.org (Rise, Ye Sea Slugs! ,Cherry Blossom Epiphany etc.)

sometimes i fill a page with more than a dozen haiku using 1, 2 and 3 columns -- msword does not allow 4 -- so that is one constraint we might call software-set!

As a translator/writer, the hardest thing was giving up hyphens and . . . 's (whatever dot, dot , dots are called) because they make a poem look assymetrical and that looks horrid when part of a cluster.

I
do
try
here
write
poetry
alleged
snowball.
Criticism
disregards
fulfillment
appropriated.

I
am
the
most
least
poetic
however
strongly
attracted
stimulated
thouroughly
wanting to do more of this..............the snowball is melting!